Word.ws English Dictionary

rayleigh

/ˈreɪli/

rayleigh noun: a unit of brightness (of the sky at night) equal to 10¹⁰/4π quanta per square meter per second per steradian.

Noun

rayleigh (plural rayleighs)

  1. A unit of brightness (of the sky at night) equal to 10¹⁰/4π quanta per square meter per second per steradian

Proper noun capitalized: Rayleigh

Rayleigh

  1. A surname.
  2. Lord Rayleigh, English physicist
  3. A town and civil parish with a town council in Rochford district, Essex, England (OS grid ref TQ8090).
  4. A neighbourhood of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, named after the English town.

Forms of rayleigh

pluralrayleighs

Origin of rayleigh

For Lord Rayleigh, English physicist

Of the same origin as Raleigh (which is usually pronounced differently); see Wikipedia at Rayleigh, Essex § Toponymy.

Words formed from rayleigh

Phrases with rayleigh

Questions about rayleigh

What does rayleigh mean?
Rayleigh means a unit of brightness (of the sky at night) equal to 10¹⁰/4π quanta per square meter per second per steradian.
What part of speech is rayleigh?
Rayleigh can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce rayleigh?
Rayleigh is pronounced /ˈreɪli/.
What is the plural of rayleigh?
The plural of rayleigh is rayleighs.

Words near rayleigh in the dictionary

  1. rayite
  2. Rayl
  3. Raylan
  4. rayle
  5. rayled
  6. rayleigh
  7. Rayleigh jet
  8. Rayleigh jets
  9. Rayleigh quotient
  10. Rayleigh quotients
  11. Rayleigh scattering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rayleigh (page history and authors); Rayleigh (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “rayleigh.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rayleigh. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.